EASy
The GIS program that simulates habitats,
integrating high quality imagery and analytical tools.

Introduction

Fishscape was funded by NSF to study the complex dynamics of the Eastern Pacific Tuna Fishery.

By connecting realistic models of oceanographic conditions, fish population dynamics, and fisher behavior, Fishscape will shed light on still unanswered key ecological questions, such as the relationships among nutrient availability, ocean currents, and reproductive success in a pelagic environment.

Realistic assumptions about fishers’ biases and shortcuts will also be integrated into Fishscape, yielding measures of the effects of factors like skipper skill, technological change, and market forces on relative gains among national fishing fleets.

Once the model is cross-validated, the project will use robust decision making methods to explore through simulation over a wide range of social and ecological factors to discover what makes the system resilient and what leads to instability. Specifically, we will test three meta-scenarios in order to identify sources of stability and instability within the system: